The rapid development of information industry and wide applications of computers have made the computer an essential electric appliance in general households. However, computer equipment generally have very short product life cycle. New products are constantly introduced. To match computer system upgrade, users often have to replace a portion of the equipment.
Take computer CPU for instance. Most large CPU manufacturers in the world today, such as Intel and AMD, have different working frequencies for their CPU products. Even CPUs of the same type may have different working frequencies. In addition, memories also have different working frequencies. In order to improve system operation effectiveness and flexibility, or to match the working pulse of the elements on the mainboard, these days most computers provide a functional design that enables users to set system working frequency.
Referring to FIG. 1 for a process flow of setting system working frequency adopted in conventional techniques. The process steps include: turning on power supply (10); executing computer reset and asserting reset (11); deasserting reset and starting CPU (12); determining whether the system working frequency matching the system working frequency set by BIOS (13); if the system working frequencies do not match, executing modulation programs of clock chip by CPU and adjusting the system working frequency to match the value of BIOS (14), then returning to step 11; if the system working frequencies match, proceeding and completing the subsequent initialization process (15).
In the process flow set forth above, when the computer asserts reset, the chipset, CPU and peripheral devices enter in an initialization state, then deassert reset is performed. Meanwhile the system proceeds operations according to the initialized working frequency of the clock chip. In general, the initialized working frequency of the clock chip is preset when the computer was shipped from the plant. If the initialized working frequency is different from what users have set, the working frequency of the clock chip is modulated by BIOS for matching the frequency set by the users. Then the system must be reset again so that it is able to operate according to the frequency set by the users, and to complete the subsequent system initialization process.
The biggest disadvantage of the conventional techniques is that if the working frequency set by users is different from the initialization, the computer must be reset twice before completing the setting of system working frequency. As a result, initialization time is longer. It also may cause dysfunction of the chipset or elements on the computer mainboard, or even result in system down. Hence to improve the method of setting system working frequency has become an important issue to computer system developers. The goal is to streamline the setting process of system working frequency.